


The Outlaw and the Interloper

by SubtheScrub



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Asperger Syndrome, Autism, Blood, Deadlock Gang, Detectives, Disassociation, Drama, Eventual Happy Ending Maybe?, Eventual Romance, F/M, Psychological Drama, Road Trips, Slow Burn, Trauma, Violence, cowboy, mccree is a cynic yet a wisecracker, oc had a bad past, preBlackwatch!McCree
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7964053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SubtheScrub/pseuds/SubtheScrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the great and devasting Omnic Crisis, Leona Matias tries to live the life of a normal college student working on obtaining her degree for criminal justice. However, her love of solving independent criminal cases is hard to ignore, and when she comes across the whereabouts of the dreaded Deadlock Gang, she finds herself kidnapped and taken hostage across the Southwest of the USA during an illicit weapon escort mission. During the trip, she’s left in the watchful custody of the infamous sharpshooting outlaw Jesse McCree, who just so happens to be one of the main suspects she’s been trying to hunt down. What she doesn’t realize is in order to dig into McCree and find out his dirty secrets, she’ll have to uncover some of her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Outlaw and the Interloper

Several manila folders were laid out in front of her, flipped open and strewn across the long gray table. The environment around her dimmed, every sound muted to almost complete silence and all colors washed out to darkness, as if a light only focused on the case files. Leo stared hard at them, her faded blue eyes narrowed as she steepled her fingers together and pressed them to her lips in deep thought. Her elbows dug into the table as she leaned over the files, studying their insides and the information they contained. Criminal cases. Top secret information only head honchos at the Los Angeles Police Department and above could access. Yet here they were, lying in front of her.

These cases in particular held a shared connection: Each criminal and face that stared back at her through photographs, each hastily scrawled criminal activity details on papers and sheets scattered about, all belonged from a single criminal group. The Deadlock Gang. Specializing in illicit weapon and military hardware trafficking, the Deadlock Gang had cheated, stolen from, and terrorized the Southwest of the U.S.A for years, conveniently gaining notability around the time the Omnic Crisis began. They’d been underground most of the time, but occasionally had been spotted several times by the public eye, more towards the California area as of late. Despite multiple police departments, the FBI, and rumors of Overwatch on their tail, few members had been arrested and locked away while their main headquarters remained undiscovered. Leo’s current mission was to figure out their headquarters’ location and put a lockdown on the Deadlock Gang once and for all.

In her mind’s eye, Leo could see a window in front of her, peering through it into an interrogation room with each criminal from the case files standing in front of a wall marked with inches and lines, marking each ones height.  Although she only knew their faces and upper bodies, Leo could deduce enough of the information given to her to picture the rest of them, though she knew it wasn’t necessary. She closed her eyes, briefly pondering over each file before looking back down and flipping folders closed. As she did, the criminals lined in front of her vanished from the wall, popping out of sight one by one. Those were not important. They were simply grunts, criminals with certain skills over strength, intimidation, or weapon handling that were taken on by the Gang and simply lived to serve. What Leo was really interested in were the leaders.

Two folders were left open that particularly caught her eye. Two criminals were left standing at the wall. The more notable one was an outlaw named Jesse McCree. In the given photograph, he looked to be no older than twenty yet had obviously already partaken in his fair share of crime sprees. Brown hair framed his roguish face and hung to his chin, his dark brown eyes alit with mischief as a cocky grin spread across his face. Atop his head was a wide rimmed cowboy hat and Leo couldn’t help but let out a soft snort, wondering how the photographer had let him keep that on. Even in the still photograph, he gave off an aura of confidence, and she could see him through the window in her mind leaning on one leg with his hands on his hips, thumbs tucked into his trouser pockets as he titled his head, a smirk plastered in satisfaction yet challenging the viewer.

While McCree wasn’t any sort of leader according to the papers on him and Leo’s deductions, he stood out as a loner sort of type. He had been involved in personal crime sprees in his home state of New Mexico, often standing alone in each of them before he joined the Deadlock Gang for unknown reasons, though Leo partly suspected he was drawn in by the illegal weaponry. Even then he was usually seen at crimes alone and almost never with other gang members. Unusual, considering how close-knit the Deadlock Gang seemed to be. He was also an excellent sharpshooter, as seen in crime photos where few bullet holes were left over in crime scenes with clean shots identified from multiple witnesses from a revolver McCree was often seen carrying around. A few witness reports even claimed watching McCree whip out his gun, fire a round off, and take out every man the bullets were intended for in the blink of an eye, and although Leo found the claims false beyond belief, she found it strange that in some crime scenes, several bodies were found dead with a single bullet hole straight between each of the victim’s eyes. This was apparently McCree’s calling card, with side notes about witnesses and civilians referring to his mark as “Deadeye.”

Leo’s eyes flickered to the other file, which addressed one of the head leaders of the Gang. Jackson Casanova, or “Red-Eye Nova” as his alias claimed, didn’t seem to be the founder or the main leader of the Gang, but reports led to believe that he was one of the most notable members and the only leader to be caught on camera. The photograph included, apparently the only picture law enforcement kept of him on record, didn’t even show much of himself. It was slightly blurred, possibly from being taken at a quick moment, and showed only a shadowy figure running away, his back to the photographer yet his head twisted back to look over his shoulder. All that was visible of his face was a single red dot on his eye on the right side of his face, yet it wasn’t from the red-eye flash the camera gave. It was clear to Leo that this man had a robotic eye, one that glowed menacingly and sent a chill down her spine despite herself.

While McCree was clean with his victims, Nova was the opposite. Leo flipped through crime scenes and autopsy reports to view corpses stabbed and cut apart violently, gashes not only from knife wounds but from bullet holes as well. All the marks seemed to be random placement, as if Nova mindlessly slashed and shot at his victims, yet a few unlucky one’s faces were so scarred they weren’t able to be properly identified. Some even appeared to be ripped apart, as if Nova had taken pieces of the deceased’s skin in his own hands and clawed them off himself. A sense of anger and disgust clouded Leo’s mind as she wondered how someone could so easily torture these people, these humans with lives to live, and slaughter and torture them as if they were nothing but dolls-

She stopped herself. Closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. And disconnected. She couldn’t be hung up on strangers that had already passed on. She had to focus on the living and make sure no one would ever suffer from these kinds of crimes.

“For the last time Ms. Matias, would you please answer the question?”

Leo opened her eyes at the sudden voice and the world around her faded into a different environment as she was jarringly shoved out of her mental workspace. She found herself at the back corner of a large classroom at a long, gray table behind four rows of students and similar tables and staring towards the front of the room, where a middle aged balding professor in a gray sports jacket stood in front of a large Smartboard, a disapproving and impatient scowl on his face. She blinked a few more times, caught off guard at the sudden change in surroundings before looking down at the table she sat at. Instead of the case files and photographs she had been looking over, there were only notebook pages with incomplete equations scribbled on and a large textbook filled with College Algebra math problems that could very well likely be used to bash someone’s head open with one good swing. Pushing further dark thoughts aside, Leo quickly glanced back up at the Smartboard, finding numbers and letters in digital black colored marker scrawled across the board, and she searched through the maze of equations to find the problem the class was currently covering. She grew increasingly more frustrated and harried beyond control as she failed to recognize a set pattern or path in the numbers and could only identify the mathematical marks as a discombobulated mess.

A sigh from Professor Garrison momentarily distracted Leo, and she looked away from the board to see her Algebra instructor pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes squinted shut as his thick rimmed glasses bobbed up and down. “A response would also be acceptable at this point,” he muttered loud enough for her to hear. “We’re all waiting on you.”

Leo took a quick glance around the room and saw about eighteen students from the class of twenty four turned in their seats or craning their necks back to stare at her, truthfully waiting on her answer. Some looked bored, impatient, and hateful that she was taking so long. Others were looking at her as if she held every answer to every question in the entire world in the palm of her hand. The rest of the class had their heads down, two students sleeping while one was scribbling furiously on his paper, and the other two were staring at the professor as if waiting for him to give up and just answer his own question. Leo held back the urge to roll her eyes and instead took a moment to compose herself, clearing her throat loudly and rolling her shoulders before clasping her hands together and looking her instructor dead in the eye.

“I cannot answer that.”

A few freshmen groaned audibly and even Professor Garrison stared at Leo as if he were expecting her to laugh and claim she was only joking before giving him the answer. When her expression remained serious and unchanged, he shook his head with a disappointed sigh before turning back to the board, his voice growing almost bored and monotone as he continued his lecture and filled the empty white space with even more numbers. The class followed his lead and resumed taking notes, but Leo could only silently curse at herself as she threaded her fingers through her honey blonde bangs and stared down at her incomplete notes, tuning everything else out to static.

Several minutes later, Professor Garrison wrapped up his lecture and gave out the lengthy weekend assignment as the class packed up their things and headed out of the room. By that point, Leo had calmed the tidal waves that were her emotions and resumed her preferred state of neutrality and indifference as she opened up her black and white polka dotted backpack and slipped her heavy math textbook and her rarely used notebook inside. Though she tuned her environment out as she hefted the now heavy backpack onto her shoulders, she barely heard her math instructor call her name. When she turned, the middle aged man was sitting at his desk at the front of the room, peering sternly at her over his glasses as he waved her over. Numbly, she brushed past her remaining classmates hurrying out of the room as she headed to Garrison’s desk and stood in front of him, staring blankly down at him and slipping her hands inside her livid pea coat pockets.

 As Professor Garrison took some time to shuffle together his lecture notes and stash them into his briefcase, Leo took a quick glance at his desk and noted the few small picture frames and the occasional knick-knacks he had placed around his workspace. There wasn’t anything new that she could look over, yet she noted with a quirked eyebrow that one or two things were missing since she had last stood at the instructor’s desk. What she could gather, as always, was that truthfully, despite his stern and strict demeanor as a university professor teaching freshmen straight out of high school, he was considerably a kind honest man. Truthfully, Leo knew that no matter how many times Garrison would sigh or pinch the bridge of his nose or rub his temples, he really meant the best for her and hated to see another student of his fall prey to the harsh life between shifting from teenager to adulthood that was college. However, since she was being truthful, she had to admit that no matter how many after-class meetings she had to go through, she couldn’t give less of a damn about useless algebraic numbers and equations and what points on a graph you have to put down to get a damn curve.

 _“Focus,”_ Leo reminded herself as she took a short breath. _“You have to stay calm.”_

“Ms. Leona,” Garrison spoke, drawing her attention back to the man sitting in front of her with his hands clasped together. “I think you understand why I’ve called you up here. Yet again.”

Leo blinked and focused her sight on the rim of his glasses, saying nothing. Something about staring into his eyes and seeing the raw emotion showing plain for all to see made her feel queasy, but she didn’t want to get snapped at for seemingly not paying attention when she was literally standing not even a foot away from her professor. She could try, but guilt was a strong emotion she had yet to suppress. Involuntary fear of angering others was another. She figured that having her sight fixed on him but not directly focusing on him while taking his words with a grain of salt was a well enough compromise for the both of them. Unfortunately, Professor Garrison took her silence as a sign to continue.

“You didn’t do so well on your last exam,” Garrison said. “Actually, you did much less than well. I’m afraid to say your scores have dropped the past few weeks and seem to be on a steady decline.”

His gaze barely softened and Leo quickly adjusted her sight so she was staring at a mole on his cheek, the nauseous feeling inside of her growing. Garrison had a way with words, she’d give him that much. The voice he used during classes and lectures, boring and professional, was subtly different than the voice he used talking to students one-on-one. With the latter, he allowed some of his professionalism to fade and slipped in warm, almost caring tones to his voice. It was barely there, and only a trained expert in subtle physical changes like Leo could notice such a small thing. It wasn’t the first time that she found herself almost wishing that she could afford such a luxury as that.

“In all honesty, I’m having trouble understanding why you’re having trouble grasping the material,” her instructor continued. “I’ve heard from some of your other professors in passing. Sometimes they mention you and how brilliantly you do in their classes. Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Psychology to name a few. Clearly you’re an intelligent student, yet I just don’t get why you don’t apply that same level of thinking to this class.”

Ah yes. There was always something about everyone that Leo could attach to and use it to immediately help block the other person out. For Professor Garrison, that was his somewhat unintentional amount of narrow-mindedness. He seemed to have a firm belief that if a student excelled in one subject, surely they could be able to have the same level of expertise in any other subject if they tried hard enough. If that were true, Leo was pretty sure she would have gotten her bachelors by now. Regardless, it helped her remove her emotional attachment to his speech just enough that she wouldn’t have any trouble remaining disinterested no matter what he said but not enough that she couldn’t block him out completely.

“I’ve also noticed you have yet to make use of my office hours, no matter how many times I recommend them to you.” At this, Professor Garrison shook his head slightly, as if to say “Tsk tsk, it’s like you’re doing this to me on purpose.” Instead what came out his mouth was, “If you stopped by, we sit down and review some of the lessons I covered or I could take a look at your notes to see where you keep getting stuck.”

Garrison fell silent and Leo assumed he was done talking up until she noticed the expectant look he was giving her. She turned her gaze onto a cheap looking Newton’s Cradle and gently ran a fingertip over the metallic painted surface, thinking over her response.

“You didn’t win the lottery this week again, huh? Those tickets were costly too.” Her tone was as impassive as she could make it, as if she were only asking about the weather.

A deep scowl crossed Garrison’s face where there had been a soft, almost caring look to it before. “Stop that,” he said automatically.

“Stop what?”

“Digging into my personal life with a couple of glances. I don’t know how you do that, but it’s… unsettling. And I would very much appreciate if you didn’t change the subject either.”

Leo’s gaze settled onto an empty spot on his desk where there was a small patch of bare wood among the dust. “Divorce not going well either?”

“Matias…” Garrison had a warning edge in his voice this time, but it was the mention of her surname that made her frown lightly and back off, but not before catching the bags under his eyes.

“You haven’t been getting enough sleep. They look recent too,” Leo mentioned, pointing the bags out with her finger.

Garrison gave a heavy sigh and rubbed a hand over the side of his face, dragging his skin with and giving him a solemn aged appearance. “Well, if you really must know, the things you mentioned aren’t the only reasons,” he reluctantly explained. “Last night was probably the worst of them. A ship docked at the port and cargo was being unloaded into the warehouses almost all night. Extremely loudly as well-“ Garrison broke off and caught himself. “But that’s not the point!”

That was another fault of his that Leo could use: he could get exasperated very easily and in turn become very distracted. Teaching college courses was tough, of course, and she knew he had set up some mental blocks to make sure any normal students trying to avoid classes or assignments wouldn’t get past him, but she knew just the right buttons to push to send his patience over a tiring edge and make him lose focus rather easily. Garrison suffering from exhaustion from his life outside of his job helped her in the long run as well. She partly hoped that at this point, her instructor would give up on their mini lecture and try again another day, or if he chose to try and press further, Leo could just continue running circles around him and cut the conversation off as quick as possible. It had worked for her the other times he had tried to reach out to her in these after-class meetings. Unfortunately, it seemed the professor was especially determined today, and he kept barreling on.

“If you don’t want my help, then at least tell me you went through with the tutoring I recommended for you. Did you find a tutor that could help you study?”

Leo decided that giving him a half-truth would help quench some of his curiosity and leave her be, especially since she did manage to find someone that was eligible to help her with her coursework. Even if they weren’t exactly suitable. She kept her eyes trained on the desk and nodded.

Garrison seemed to deflate slightly in relief, the smallest of smiles touching his features. “Well that’s something,” he said. “Is it someone from the tutoring services?”

Leo paused, taking a moment to ponder how she would word her answer to her expectant professor. It definitely wasn’t someone from the tutoring services the college offered. She doubted a student or even a professional tutor would last even five minutes trying to deal with her. Instead, she had chosen someone that knew… _enough_ in mathematics. Not enough that they could confidently help Leo learn the whole coursework in a night and help her pass the class, but enough that they could be used as a scapegoat.

“Schoolmate,” she simply replied.

“Ah…” Garrison’s shoulders slumped and Leo held back a victory smirk, knowing that her answer had sent him from a stubborn offense to a resigned and submissive defeat. Or so she thought. “I suppose that might help but even so…”

Damn, the man was stubborn. Leo wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. Desperate, her eyes flickered around the area Garrison sat at and the man himself, searching for a distraction, a flicker of movement, anything she could use to escape from the conversation without having to resort to turning around and walking out mid-talk. She wasn’t above doing that, but she didn’t want her instructor to automatically fail her just because she was rude.

Just then, Garrison made the mistake of taking a quick glance at his watch and Leo, eyes ever expectant, picked up the subtle movement and read every tone and message it conveyed like a book. Tiny details ran through her head in a second as she broke the almost insignificant act into pieces of a puzzle. A mental connection for her to follow as she analyzed the gesture before giving him a quick once over, picking up tiny details and piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle in the process otherwise known as deduction. Had she not been so concentrated, she would have been a little scornful at herself for having to resort to seeing Garrison looking at his watch in order to end the unwanted conversation, but her patience was being tried and she no longer had the energy or will to listen to her instructor lecture her for another several minutes. When she was finished and had her deductions and response pieced together in her head, a few seconds had passed and Garrison was struggling to find the right words to continue. Leo beat him to the punch.

“You should be on your way, Professor. It seems to be too much risk to be late for this particular appointment.”

“Oh for the love of-!” Garrison bolted out of his seat and Leo couldn’t help herself as she flinched and took a step back until she realized the professor’s outburst wasn’t aimed at her. He swung his briefcase onto his desk and hastily clicked it open, double checking everything was inside before he slammed it shut and locked it. He nearly knocked a couple picture frames over as he pulled the briefcase close to him and hurried past Leo.

“I hate to say this, but you’re right!” Garrison yelled over his shoulder. “But we’re picking this up again next week! And be sure to at least attempt the homework I’ve assigned over the weekend please.”

“Professor Garrison,” Leo called, watching as he stopped halfway out the door. The last thing she wanted to do was pick up another conversation with him, especially when she had narrowly escaped the last one, but the detective part of her was itching to finish the puzzle. “Which appointment are you late for? The divorce consultation or the addiction treatment?”

Garrison paused and Leo waited for several moments until she heard a sigh and saw a tentative hand rest against the doorframe. “Today?” he said in the low tone of a tired man. “The divorce.”

Leo’s face remained impassive as she watched his retreating backside.

Thankfully, Leo had no other classes to attend or people to see for the rest of the afternoon. She didn’t think she could handle sitting still for another two hours or even holding a conversation with someone. All she wanted to do was go back to the apartment she shared with her roommate and return her focus back to the Deadlock Gang case that Professor Garrison had so rudely interrupted. Then again, she didn’t mean to have another unintentional case session in class, but she couldn’t really blame herself. Garrison and the subject he taught was oh-so easy to block out during lectures. At least in her apartment no one would be able to drag her out of her mind just to ask something pointless like what x equaled if a train was running at the speed of a graph going up a steep parabola or some stupid nonsense like that. She found herself pausing to rethink what she just thought and shook her head in disgust. This class really was going to end her via brain melting out of sheer boredom and stupidity.

Until she arrived at her apartment, Leo was mildly content with sitting on the shuttle bus heading from her college of University of California, Los Angeles to her apartment a bit of a ways away. Granted, it was a forty five minute walk between her school and her residence, but there were considerably less people on the bus each and every day than there were on the streets and sidewalks of the major city, where crowds often times liked to gather and make it more of an uncomfortable nuisance for her to get to place to place. Besides, she had a better chance to pop in her earbuds and listen to music, which made it much easier to block out the annoying people around her. To avoid people staring or strangers trying to make conversation with her, --she would consider brutally disfiguring them if they tried-- Leo took to staring out the window and watching the passing cityscape of Los Angeles sweep by as remnants of solemn Irish folk music by some German musician filled her ears and clouded her erratic mind like a drug.

Ever since the Omnic Crisis began, Los Angeles had suddenly and rapidly grown and expanded in technological advancements due to the war periods. Areas outside of major cities were reduced to war torn battlefields with living areas demolished and thousands of innocent people were shot down and killed by renegade Omnics. Even more were left homeless and had nowhere to go, but with the help of multiple charities from civilians, actors from Hollywood, and even the peace-keeping organization Overwatch, living quarters were erected and advanced shelters were secured in a matter of months. Technology only proceeded to boom even more once Overwatch had defeated the rogue Omnics and ended the Crisis that had caused so much suffering. Now gleaming skyscrapers towered over the streets, advanced vehicles like hovercrafts zoomed by, and Los Angeles was filled to the brim with both human and Omnic alike, now living together in peace.

Yet even now, scars still lasted and prejudice stood strong. Several seats to Leo’s right, she noticed a civilian Omnic sitting in a white t-shirt and cargo shorts staring down at a tablet as its finger flicked up and down, playing a game of some kind. However, there was a considerably large space between the Omnic and the person standing closest to them, and Leo noticed the amount of people that were staring suspiciously at the Omnic, glancing at them from time to time, or outright glaring at them. She didn’t have to read too much into their expressions and body language to know what they were thinking, and the feeling sent her teeth clenching and her stomach tightening beyond her control. Part of her understood why people were wary of Omnics. She too held a bit of caution toward them in case another Crisis were to happen that affected the entirety of the Omnic population. Still, there was no justification to beating innocent Omnics senseless in the streets or spitting at them and calling them the worst slurs and insults created, as she had seen happen many times during and after the Crisis. It wasn’t uncommon for civilian Omnics to be killed either, and that thought just angered Leo, plain and simple. Remember those who had fallen during the Crisis and take precaution to make sure it never happened again? Most definitely. Treat the innocent Omnics like garbage because of something they weren’t a part of and go so far as to kill them? Bullshit.

However, the shuttle slid to a halt at Leo’s stop a few moments later and the Omnic and her pro-Omnic opinions were forgotten as she grabbed her backpack and stood to join the few people that headed off the bus. As soon as she left the shuttle, she immediately took a right and felt a slight brush of wind from the shuttle speeding away as she headed towards her apartment, which was a mere three blocks away. As she walked with her hands shoved in her pockets, Leo took a brief notice of the new graffiti painted on the side of a large brick building that was once a historic building of some kind but was now used as a small storage facility. It was mostly promoting new rappers and songwriters, something that wasn’t entirely surprising given that Leo lived in the lower middle class streets of L.A., but there was something else that made her stop in her tracks and stare, her thoughts halting for a moment or two.

At the edge of the wall, the white and orange symbol of Overwatch had been spray painted on long ago in honor of the heroes that stopped the Omnic Crisis and continued to dedicate their lives to protect and unite the world. Despite the many graffiti that had either been washed off or spray painted over, the Overwatch symbol had always been left alone, as if some sort of unspoken rule had been set up in order to prevent anyone from covering the symbol up or taking it down. However, there was now a large and ugly red X sprayed over it, the lines crisscrossed almost exactly over the center of the symbol. The sight made Leo frown and wonder why anyone would bother such a pointless action before shaking her head and continuing onward, ignoring the heated feeling of offense inside her chest.

The apartment complex Leo lived at wasn’t the best quality of living to make a home out of, but it wasn’t the worst either. In her opinion, it was better to live at the edge of busy Los Angeles than in a dorm with college frats and sororities who found it better to play loud music in the middle of the night and yell and bang on walls than participate in the normal human activity of sleeping when appropriate. At least in the apartment, the most noise Leo had to deal with was her neighbors in the floor above her stomping and slamming doors and sometimes having heated arguments, but that was something she could easily block out with the help of her room’s higher soundproofed walls, in which case all loud noises would be merely a muffle to her. Although, a downside was having to be able to keep track of a key, which Leo found herself fumbling for as she reached the side entrance of the complex. She found herself cursing as she searched for it until she discovered she had absentmindedly grabbed it a block away and was already holding it in her clenched hand, and she shook her head in disgust at herself as she unlocked the door and headed up the stairs to the first floor.

As Leo headed down the hall towards her room, she felt the carpet under her ankle boots squish and sink into the floor, and she frowned as she looked down and realized someone had spilled an unidentified liquid (alcohol by the color of the stain and the putrid stench emanating from it) right in the middle of the carpet. And she had stepped right in it in her two-weeks-three-days old ankle boots. The ones she had received as a gift from her roommate. Great.

Leo found her shoulders slumping but she kept her face passive as she looked back up and made a beeline straight for her apartment. Today had not been the best day, and all she wanted to do was resume her case studies and attempt to make some sort of progress on the Deadlock Gang. She could already feel the emotions she kept locked up leaking out even as she reached her door and almost immediately unlocked it with a few flicks of her wrist and a turn of a key and a doorknob. With a loud creak, she pushed the door open and stepped inside, softly exhaling a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding as she felt the warm vibes of home surround her as soon as the door clicked shut behind her. She plucked her earbuds from her ears, which had been playing classical music, and she paused and tilted her head to listen to the state of her apartment. When only silence met her ears, signaling that her roommate was still at the college, she sighed once again in relief and slipped out of her boots, pushing them aside with her foot and making a mental note to take some time to clean off the alcoholic stench. Or ask her roommate to clean it off for her. Whichever was more preferable at the time.

A coatrack was placed at the corner between the wood paneled entryway and the carpeted hallway leading into her bedroom and bathroom, but once she slipped out of it, Leo found it nicer to throw her coat on the settee pushed against the wall in the entryway. The blue gray material of her coat matched well with the light pink cloth of the seat. Picking up her bag, she immediately headed straight to her room and pushed open the normally closed door, satisfaction washing over her at the familiar sight. Her room was always kept as she liked it: organized to her standards. A full sized bed on a simple frame was pushed in the corner of the room with the blankets made to keep it looking nice and clean. Directly next to it, under the wide window that looked out to the street in front of the apartment, was a long desk cluttered with various mechanical bits and pieces she had collected over the years as well as scrap electrical wires and various tools. A few small, torn apart machines and mechanisms sat almost depressingly amongst the parts, some half-finished, others barely touched. As the desk wrapped around the corner of the room and extended to the adjacent wall, the mechanical parts gave way to endless loops and bundles of electrical cables haphazardly strewn about that served as a giant fire hazard yet all connected to a giant PC with blinking and flashing lights as well as a soft fan running in the background, one of her proudest creations that she had made years ago. Connected next to it was a 32” monitor with the screen dark but the yellow power light flashing, indicating it was merely asleep, with a black wireless keyboard and a matching computer mouse under it. Next to that, almost teetering at the edge of the giant desk, was a homemade police radio that was used to access police channels and intercept calls from the Los Angeles Police Department and the 911 service in the area in order to keep the crime activity in the city in check and see if any leads in cases Leo was interested in were being made. It was probably the most illegal machine she had on her, but it was also one of the most useful.

Leo looked over her things, briefly considering how she should approach the case. She doubted the radio would do her any good at the time; most criminal activity didn’t occur until after dinnertime. She contemplated checking the LAPD’s records she had access to over the web profile she had hacked into, but ultimately she decided against it. She suspected there wouldn’t be any leads or updates on the whereabouts of the Deadlock Gang, and every fact she needed she already had on her. This left her with the option of reviewing what she already had, something she had been repeating over and over again for the past few weeks and hoping to uncover something she had missed. Prepping herself for the work ahead, she tossed her bag aside and leapt onto her bed, immediately grabbing a plush throw pillow and curling up into a ball as she buried her face into it, taking up the most comfortable position she could get into. As her sight was met with darkness and all around her was silence, Leo found herself easily drifting back into her mind and was soon seated at the long gray table looking over the manila folders in front of her once again.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so first off this is my first work posted on AO3 so please forgive me if I there are any errors or if I make mistakes. I'm still learning.
> 
> Secondly, I'm very excited to be working on this fic but there's no set schedule as of now! I'm currently enrolled in college and I'll probs only work on this fic whenever I have free time so updates will be scattered. I'm really looking forward to working with characters from Overwatch as well as developing more about Leo's character (she's barely existed 2 months and she's already one of my favs). Chapters will also be usually around 18-20 pages in Word. Maybe longer sometimes, maybe shorter on others, but that estimate will probs be the average
> 
> Big thanks to djcamidog for beta reading this chapter! She's seriously the best and you should go check out her Overwatch fic in the works too~ (http://archiveofourown.org/works/7768918/chapters/17718790)
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments/kudos are appreciated :3


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